Gene Hackman

May 10, 2005

Early in Bottle Rocket, writer-director Wes Anderson's 1996 debut film, a little girl asks her recently de-institutionalized 26-year-old brother when he will be coming home. "I can't come home," he explains. "I'm an adult." With that scene Anderson, himself 26 at the time, announced the theme that would dominate all his movies to date: the plight of the man-child, too old to live life like a kid but not mature enough to stop trying.
In Bottle Rocket, it was half-hearted thieves Anthony and Dignan straddling the gap between boyhood and manhood.

July 01, 1985

“Symbol of the American Spirit." That's the headline in the ads for Rambo, which is about its hero's foray into Vietnam today to rescue American POWs. The subject has been used before, in Uncommon Valor with Gene Hackman, in Missing in Action and Missing in Action II, with Chuck Norris: but Rambo outdistances them. Three facts: Rambo is the current box-office champion in the country. ("Rambo Ahead by a Mile," Variety, June 5.) Like the second Norris film, Rambo is a sequel.